Rape, sex abuse claims against TV star multiply

POLICE are pursuing 120 separate lines of inquiry involving alleged rape and sexual abuse by Sir Jimmy Savile stretching over a period of four decades and ''on a national scale'', Scotland Yard says.

Two formal criminal allegations of rape and six of indecent assault have been recorded so far against the late DJ and television presenter, who died last year, but police said they had received information relating to up to 25 potential victims, the majority of whom were girls aged 13 to 16 when the abuse is alleged to have occurred.

The earliest allegation dates from 1959, said Commander Peter Spindler, head of serious crime investigations at Scotland Yard, which is co-ordinating the inquiry. But the reports ''span four decades of abuse'', the majority relating to incidents in the 1970s and 1980s.

Five British police forces have received allegations about the TV star, he said.

Asked whether it was now possible to say definitively that Savile (below), who died in October 2011 aged 84, was a serial abuser of young females, Commander Spindler said: ''I think the facts speak for themselves around the number of women who have come forward and spoken about his behaviour [and] his predilection for teenage girls … It's a pattern of behaviour that is being presented to us.''

His remarks give the clearest indication to date of the scale of abuse Savile is now thought to have committed, following a torrent of allegations against him since it emerged 10 days ago that the BBC had dropped a Newsnight investigation into claims of abuse. The report, in which 10 women accused Savile of abusing them, was shelved in December last year, just before the BBC broadcast a Christmas tribute to him.

The BBC's director-general, George Entwistle, apologised on Monday to the abused women and said the corporation would hold an internal inquiry into its own conduct, amid growing reports of a culture in which sexual harassment was commonplace.

The former head of Jersey's child abuse investigation unit said this week that he believed Savile was involved in abuse at the Haut de la Garenne children's home, the subject of a three-year investigation into sexual abuse.

Savile, who raised millions of pounds for charities during his lifetime, had his own rooms at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and at Broadmoor secure psychiatric hospital, and stayed at both institutions frequently.

Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS [hospital] trust said in a statement: ''We are unaware of any record or reports of inappropriate behaviour of this nature during Sir Jimmy Savile's work with the trust.''

Peter Liver, director of the NSPCC, said the child protection charity had passed 24 reports of abuse to Scotland Yard, 17 of which related directly to Savile.

The charity called on other victims of abuse to seek counselling or support.

British Prime Minister David Cameron raised the prospect of Savile eventually being stripped of his knighthood, while acknowledging that under present rules it was not possible to do so.

GUARDIAN

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